Page 46 of Worth Every Moment

“I remember.”

“Did he have his nose straightened in the end? He tried to send Nico a bill for plastic surgery to fix it.”

Erica’s energy turns frosty, and I don’t know what I said to cause it.

“You want to tell me what’s really wrong?” I ask gently. “What happened back there?”

She slumps into the seat. “Mum wants me to get a boob job. And I said no, and then she gave me that article as evidence that she’s right and I’m wrong and I’ll never make it in the movies.”

“Ah.” I rub a hand over my jaw. “So the inverted boobs comment hit hard.”

“Today, yeah.”

“Unless your boobs are fantastic actresses, I’m not sure it matters.”

She huffs. “Yeah. That’s more or less what I said. But she also wants me to get my ears pinned back, and the lump shaved off my nose. And there was something else…”

Her nose? Her ears?“What does your mother see when she looks at you?”

Erica clasps her hands in her lap and stares down at them. “Imperfection.”

I have so many questions, because, in my mind, Erica Lefroy is the most perfect woman I’ve ever met. I don’t push for her to say more because I can tell she doesn’t want to elaborate, so I merely say, “I’d never want to change a single thing about you.”

She bites her bottom lip and stares into her lap, and for a while, we sit in silence as the car drives through the streets of midtown. I know we can’t continue to ignore what happened last time we met, or why we haven’t spoken. It’s sitting here with us, the great big unspoken elephant in the back of the car, and finally, I can’t bear it any longer.

“So… are we okay now?”

She turns slowly to look at me. “Feels like you're asking that a lot recently.”

“Feels like I need to,” I say solemnly, easing my arm out from behind her. “So… are we?”

Erica glances out of the window, and her response comes a beat too slow. “Because you made a few shitty jokes, or because you smashed a camera and forced me into your car in the middle of Harley Street?” The tilt of her mouth tells me she’s teasing, or trying to, but I sense discomfort beneath her pretense.

“Neither. Because last time I saw you, I had my head between your legs, and then you called me names and ran away.”

She emits a pained sounding sigh, tips her head against the headrest and closes her eyes. “Oh. Yeah,” she murmurs. “That.”

“That,” I repeat quietly, a slow sense of dread filling me. Maybe bringing this up is a bad idea.

Silence fills the car for a few tense moments until Erica opens her eyes and glances at me. “Amy said I should call you to apologise.”

“You told her what happened?”

“Yes.” She glances away. “Sorry. I had to talk to someone about it.”

“But you didn’t take her advice?” Erica shakes her head, and I sigh. “You could have talked to me. You know that, right?”

She rubs her thumb into her opposite palm, over and over again. “You didn’t call me either. And you said what happened between us was meaningless.”

That's the biggest goddamn lie I've ever told.Tension throbs between us, dragging the beat of my heart into its rhythm. “You said you’d wipe every second of the encounter from your memory if you could.”

She side-eyes me. “You said you’d bend me over and fuck the brat out of me.”

I cough, spluttering into my hand. Never did I think I’d hear Erica say those words. In fact, I never expected her to mention them again. “I did. I meant it too. You were really fucking mean.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers with what sounds like genuine regret.

“Me too. I wanted to call you, but I wasn’t sure you’d want to hear from me.” I wait for a moment in case she wants to tell me she did want to. Or maybe she missed me. But I get none of that, and although her lack of response causes a pinch in my chest, I keep talking. “Anyway, we can pretend nothing happened, if you want. I’ve brushed my teeth many times since then. Twice a day, at least. So what’s that? Like 100 times. Roughly. Safe to say, I have well and truly divested myself of your intoxicating bodily fluids, delicious as they were.”